Classic French Chef Eric Ripert, a personal friend of iconic writer and Chef Anthony Bourdain, commented on the upcoming biopic about Bourdain’s path towards his career as a chef.
In an interview with PEOPLE to discuss Tony, a movie that adapts the first few chapters of Bourdain’s breakthrough 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential that set him on a path toward life as a chef, Chef Ripert reflected on the first time he met Anthony Bourdain, who died at 61 in 2018.
The famed French chef of Le Bernardin met Anthony after he was a celebrated Chef, so he didn’t know the younger version of Anthony being portrayed in the biopic. “The Tony that I met was obviously very different than the Tony that is in the movie. You cannot compare the Tony Bourdain that I met with the Tony Bourdain from the movie. However, I appreciated the fact that they portrayed Anthony as a young man searching to find himself and ending up in a kitchen.”
During the time period of the biopic, Anthony “decides to be serious after having a summer of drugs, rock and roll, and, and everything — sex, I guess. I enjoyed seeing the movie, even if it doesn’t represent the Tony that I knew.”
“Tony was a great storyteller, and he never really liked to speak too much about himself,” added Chef Eric Ripert. “We never really spoke too much about those years other than what has been published by him.”
